Closeup of map of stream names. Orange is arroyo. Using map created by David Watkins
I’m a web developer, and I have two Bachelor’s degrees: one in English, one in Political Science. However, that was not the original plan. I have worked as a web developer for many years, but I feel like I learned some valuable insights in college.
Even English wasn’t the first major: I started with journalism, but then changed it to English. I’d like to take credit for predicting the death of journalism, but the reality was more personal.
Meeting a journalist under adverse circumstances
During my first year in college, one of my brothers who was too adventurous for his own good decided to cross the deadly ditches—called arroyos—in Albuquerque. There are a number of names for streams that are highly localized such as arroyo, rio, and the most hostile-sounding one: kill.
Although they don’t sound as in-your-face as “Fish Kill”, after a thunderstorm, the water racing down these concrete-lined arroyos can punch a big wallop, one capable of moving trees and cars, so he was knocked down and swept down the arroyo. The other brother with him ran back to our nearby house, and we called 911. In the midst of all that, not knowing if my brother was alive or dead, a reporter from the local paper tried to interview me. I thought, “Do I want to be be like that? That seems a bit…ghoulish. I need to change my major.”
Headlines still matter, even on the web
Even though I switched majors fairly early, I still learned to write in short sentences and paragraphs, to keep fancy words to a minimum, and most importantly, to write in most-important-first, details-later style—the style known as the inverted pyramid. Making yourself write this way tends to make blog posts better.
I also learned how to write headlines. Headlines for the web differ a bit from print headlines, but the basics still apply: be short, be clear, minimize words. The big difference with web headlines is that the headline must make sense out of context.
I realized the headline was the most re-written part of the story, and is well worth the effort. This still applies: a well-written headline can make or break your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for pages or open rate for email newsletters.
Switching majors to English
When I did switch my major, I ended up with with a concentration in Professional Writing, my theory being that was a useful skill since tech writing would switch to HTML.
By then, I had become interested in this whole Internet thing, but my university, like many back then, wasn’t quite up to speed—even though everyone had Internet access. While hanging out with the computer science types (since they had faster computer labs), I learned all about HTML.
Everything was square back then.
I also used my first web browser (Mosaic), and decided it would be cool if I could work on the Internet. Being a science fiction fan, then and now, it seemed like a way of working in the future.
From my English (professional writing) background I learned as well. The focus on knowing your audience has been helpful. Professional writing classes teach you rules, such as ‘Always spell out an acronym the first time you use it,’ and ‘Immediately use the acronym after it to help teach the reader’—hence, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Continuing with the know-your-audience theme—If I’m writing to a fellow software developer, I will say “The git repo was rebased and a crucial commit was lost.” If I’m writing to a client, I will say, “We were re-organizing the code, and something we needed was misplaced.” Both have their purposes. If I sent a more high-level sentence to a developer, they would ask, “Did you mean a rebase?” If I sent the technical jargon to a client, they would say, “Speak English please!”
The main thrust behind professional or technical writing is to increase the usability of your documentation. It wasn’t a big leap from that to realize that usability can really make or break an otherwise good site.
I don’t always use the right words for the audience; like most developers, I love jargon. But I try to look for the glazed look or the confused email that indicates I have failed to communicate effectively.
Leaving college for the dreaded “real world” (Not the MTV show)
The other thing my English degree got me was my first job out of college: at an outfit called New Mexico Technet. There were providing teacher email accounts—keep in mind this in the late 1990s. As part of that job, I was sometimes on-call for technical support. This was a real eye-opener for me, and after that I got enthused about usability in a major way, even conducting full-scale usability tests.
It’s one thing to read an article about seniors using the Internet: it’s quite another to see one using a web browser, right clicking in the middle of a website, and saying, “I see some options on this menu, but I can’t read them.” Those were the grayed-out options. All those web designers with their tiny, light-gray text on white backgrounds should have to use their websites with dark sunglasses on.
The summary, more or less
And what about that Political Science degree? Well, if nothing else, I learned that sometimes the only explanation for why things happen is politics.
Oh, for those of you who were wondering, my brother is alive and kicking. Firefighters tied to huge iron rungs in the arroyos for this purpose threw out a net and and pulled him out just before it went underground to the river.
Maybe I should have led with that. Where’s my inverted pyramid?
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